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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24059851">Receive a Plum, Return a Peach</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/zerohournineam/pseuds/zerohournineam'>zerohournineam</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Avatar: The Last Airbender</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>(because of the hunting. nothing drastic), Animal Death, Canon Universe, Cultural Differences, Fortune Telling, Friendship, Gen, Hunting Traditions, Missing Scenes, Sokka (Avatar)-centric, Southern Water Tribe, Spirit World, a lot of me just letting sokka process his grief like he deserves, i really wish that were an actual tag in this fandom...we need to make that a tag, more characters i will add in upcoming chapters, sharing tea with strangers, typical sokka style slapstick</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 18:34:22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>18,284</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24059851</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/zerohournineam/pseuds/zerohournineam</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Sokka has a complicated relationship with grieving, a complicated relationship with the Spirit World, a not-so-complicated relationship with food, and an unexplainable bond with Team Avatar's pet lemur.</p><p>There's no way any of these things are related. But the Universe just loves proving him wrong, doesn't it?</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Aang &amp; Sokka (Avatar), Hakoda &amp; Sokka (Avatar), Sokka &amp; Momo</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>149</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>"If you toss a plum, you will get back a peach. A deed for another is never forgotten." -Chinese proverb</p><p>Some incredibly small changes to canon, like Water Tribe boys going ice-dodging at 16 instead of 14. Nothing big.</p><p>Warning for reference to animal death, but it's related to hunting. Nothing incredibly gory described.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Sokka remembers the first time he goes hunting. Standing straight, proud, stuffed in a small parka, trying to make up for the space he couldn’t yet take up as his head bobbed around the same place as his father’s hip was.</p><p>He is seven. All the other men of the village call Hakoda crazy. Hunting is a job for a boy on the cusp of manhood, not a child still losing his milk teeth. But his father is a chief, and chiefs always get what they want in the end, and Sokka thinks that’s pretty <em>badass,</em> even though he’s not allowed to say that.</p><p>One of the elder boys teaches him that word, his name is Kayuq. He leads all the bigger hunts, the ones that come just before the winter gets too harsh to do anything but stay inside. They treat Kayuq well, present him with three beads of silver to put in his hair, each one for a member of his family, even though silver is rare and even Sokka’s father does not wear it. They give him the larger cut of meat whenever he comes over for dinner, the good juicy perfectly browned kind dripping with the most fat, tell him a growing man needs his strength until one night Sokka protests he is growing as well, and the chief’s son, on top of that; and Kayuq laughs good-naturedly in agreement, gives him the bigger cut instead while Sokka ignores his sister glaring at him from across the small table—but Hakoda looks at him in a way that makes him feel tiny and burning and ashamed. Later, he kneels down with a hand on his son’s shoulder, and tells him strictly that being the chief’s son does not make him better than anyone else.</p><p>Kayuq is sixteen. He earns the Mark of the Brave when he finally goes ice-dodging, and fittingly enough, leaves for the Earth Kingdom soon after to do his part in the war. It’s only years later, when Sokka realizes he never heard word of him ever again, that he thinks, perhaps, that what Hakoda did to take him on that trip out to puffin seal territory was moreso desperate than anything else.</p><p>But for now, he is seven. He still doesn’t get the bigger cuts of meat at dinner—they go to Katara now, because a young waterbender needs her strength. He’s still a little upset, until he consoles himself that she’s a <em>girl,</em> of course she’s in need of more strength. He’s already strong enough as is. Still, he makes his father promise to give him the bigger sausages this time around when he goes with him.</p><p>Hakoda wordlessly points the seals out to him as they approach, and he’s so enraptured by the bright reds and oranges and yellows of their beaks, strange colors he’s only seen traces of before on small bits of painted pottery around the house, that he doesn’t realize the fluid stroke of his father’s harpoon in the air until it’s too late.</p><p><em>“Wait!”</em> Sokka shrieks, horrified, and his father’s aim angles out of view as the seal he was aiming runs away in fright.</p><p>“What—” he says, running out of their hiding place, behind a mound of snow, “—What are you doing?!”</p><p>His father drags his harpoon back, confusion flitting through his eyes until he suddenly looks taken aback, staring squarely at Sokka’s mouth as if shocked his son is still missing his two front teeth.</p><p>“Do you…know where meat comes from, Sokka?” he asks slowly.</p><p>He opens his mouth, like he has an answer ready, then frowns and shakes his head.</p><p>“Those sausages you love so much,” his father tells him, as he motions for Sokka to come back to their hiding place, “Come from the seals.”</p><p>“I don’t get it,” he replies, but it’s in a whisper this time, as he sees a seal has come back into their view, and Hakoda tilts his harpoon and aims it yet again—and only when it hits does the realization bloom, like the blood spiraling onto the ice underneath the creature’s body.</p><p>He feels a little sick.</p><p>A minute passes until he slips down the mound of snow, over to Hakoda, and watches him slide the corpse into his arms and grunt with it teetering around in his grasp until he manages to drape it over his shoulder. It’s not graceful, but it is surprisingly gentle.</p><p>“You get meat by…killing them?” Sokka asks, but it’s really more between a statement and a question. He’s been kneeling down all this time, snow leaking into his warm skin and leaving behind wet splotches on his pants. He scrambles to his feet and runs behind his father. “So, just—just the seals? Or any animal?”</p><p>“There are a few others,” his father tells him, with his back facing Sokka. “But I wouldn’t try it with the polar bear dogs. They’re far too dangerous, even with several men on hand.”</p><p>The way he says it so casually, the way he mentions men, <em>men</em> without saying, <em>but not you, not yet,</em> like he usually does, makes Sokka flush with pride, makes his heart skip a beat.</p><p>And then it skips again, when he hears a small cry from somewhere vaguely behind him.</p><p>He shakes Hakoda’s free arm, and he stops walking. “Did you hear that?”</p><p>Hakoda turns around. “Hm?” But Sokka’s already running. He hears his father, yelling his name after him, but it starts to grow fainter as the other cry he hears grows stronger. When he reaches it, he nearly doesn’t notice, because the little thing’s fur is white and brushed right into the snow. But the red makes him stop. His voice seems to hitch in his throat.</p><p>It’s a pup, a seal pup, huddled and wailing, a big stripe of blood oozing through its coat. Sokka can hear its breathing, ragged and labored until the moment it lets out another cry, loud and bright and clear. And then it switches back again, chest heaving with each breath.</p><p>“Sokka!”</p><p>He jerks his head back up, sees his father’s figure grow larger, and looks at the seal, then his father again, the seal, his father, the seal—and then lifts up the bottom flap of his parka as quick as he can, lugging the whole thing underneath.</p><p>“Sokka,” his father says as he finally reaches him, catching his breath, “you can’t just run away like that.” And then he tilts his head as his son flashes a huge, nervous smile up at him, squatting in the snow with the bottom of his parka stretched over his knees.</p><p>“Yeahhh, sorry,” Sokka drags out, longer than he needs to, as he carefully gets to his feet. He’s swaying a little from the weight when he walks, and his abdomen looks like it has three different (moving) lumps in it now, but he figures if he acts like everything’s fine, no one else will suspect a thing.</p><p>And then the thing snips him in the stomach.</p><p>“Ow!” he yells, tumbles backwards onto the ground, and watches the seal start wailing again in his lap. He looks up at his father, silently pleading. Hakoda seems to immediately understand, but it doesn’t make his frown etch itself any less deep in his face.</p><p>“Sokka, are you sure?” He asks as the two make their way back. “He’s going to die either way.”</p><p>“He’s not!” Sokka protests, panting a little with each sentence as he struggles with the bleeding pup in his arms, wrapped up in the cloth normally used for pressing cuts of meat. “He’s not going to die! I broke my arm after that tent fell over last year and now I’m fine.”</p><p>Hakoda shakes his head. “It wasn’t a tent that hit him, though, was it? It was my harpoon.”</p><p>Sokka puffs his chest out. “Well, I bet I could take your harpoon, too.”</p><p>He laughs at that, a deep and rich rumbling sound Sokka could listen to forever, and then his face immediately grows serious.</p><p>“Let’s not make any bets on that.”</p><p>Sokka turns back to the pup, feels its breathing calm down a little underneath his mittens. Its eyes are brown, glassy enough for Sokka to see two smaller faces grinning back at him and just alive enough to observe him, wide-eyed, on their own. The pup gives a small chirp, and he snuggles it closer to his chest.</p><p>“Okay, you’re kind of adorable,” he says. “I think I’ll name you…Akung.”</p><p>Hakoda eyes him curiously. “Help?” The old Southern Water Tribe language is one that is nearly extinct, spoken only in small smatterings among the very eldest, and usually only amongst each other. It’s beyond anyone how Sokka was able to pick up that word.</p><p>“You know, ‘cause I’m helping him.” He pauses for a minute, leans forward before asking, hushed, “…Is that his mom?”</p><p>“No. See the markings on the beak? The patterns of the bands are different.”</p><p>“Ohh. Hey, Akung, let me see your be—<em>ow!”</em> It bites down on his finger, even harder than last time, and Sokka lets go. He watches, in awe, as his father uses his one free arm to scoop the pup up before it falls.</p><p>“Sokka, be careful, you can’t just drop him!”</p><p>“Why not?” he snaps, nursing his hand. “He’s the one who bit me!”</p><p>Hakoda sighs. “He’s in pain,” he says, and his voice is unusually tight. “Sometimes, when we’re in pain, we do things we don’t mean to.” He shoves the pup back to Sokka. “Wrap your arm around the middle of his body more. Keep your grip tight. Be confident in it.”</p><p>“Hmmph,” Sokka says, staring down at the puffin seal once more. “I take it back, Akung. You’re not that adorable. You’re a little cutesy, at best.”</p><p>When they make it back to their tent, Sokka takes off to show his mother. Katara tries to lob a sneak attack snowball on her brother but drops it halfway through instead when she sees the baby seal wriggling beneath the sheets.</p><p>Kya sighs. “Really, Hakoda, the puffin seals? You couldn’t have started him off with something small, like a hare?”</p><p>“It’s the off-season,” Hakoda says with a shrug. The body of the puffin seal over his shoulder slides along with him.</p><p>Sokka wakes up the next morning to the smell of sausages sizzling over the hearth, and wolfs down two plates even though he’s only hungry enough for one, just because his sister is sitting beside him watching. She sticks her tongue out and calls him gross. He crosses his arms and calls her prissy.</p><p>And then he runs out to the side of the tent, where his father had promised to take care of Akung overnight, and kneels down over the little body in the snow. He’s not breathing.</p><p>He curls his fists up against his knees. He wants to look away, but he can’t stop staring at the blood, now dried up and almost black, crookedly carving its way through the white coat.</p><p>“Sokka, there you are.”</p><p>He turns around, and finds his father lifting him to his feet, slow and gentle. He holds out his palm to him, wiggling three fingers covered in small white bandages.</p><p>“He put up quite a fight. But in the end, the bleeding was just too much.”</p><p>“No,” Sokka says quietly, edging away from Hakoda’s grasp. He nearly trips over in the snow, but catches himself. “No!” Louder, this time. “It’s your fault! You didn’t care about Akung back there either, you <em>wanted</em> him to die. You <em>wanted</em> to—” he struggles to find the words, but anger swells and thuds against his chest, so he finds the best ones he can. “You wanted to watch all of them die. Don’t ever take me out hunting again.”</p><p>“Sokka—” Hakoda starts, grabbing his arm.</p><p>“Let go! Leave me alone!”</p><p>He thinks, first, about crying in his mother’s arms, but instead slumps into his pillow. It’s not very absorbent, and it ends up too slimy for him to stick his face in anymore half an hour later. The anger doesn’t feel quite like anger anymore, all dried up and quiet inside of him, plastered on his insides, so he gets up, walks out of the tent, lets the oncoming winter weather strike against him without his parka on just to feel something. But his eyes still wander back, and he finds something he had failed to spot before on Akung’s little body—a bandage around the right flipper, countless cut up rolls of cloth crumpled away on the side, now damp with snow.</p><p>He doesn’t even notice when he starts crying. But he does know he stops when he feels a hand on his shoulder.</p><p>Wordlessly, Hakoda takes out his gauze, presses firm in the center on the back of Sokka’s hand, lets it be his axis as he wraps around and around.</p><p>“If there’s bleeding, you have to apply pressure directly to the wound,” he tells him, finally. “Make sure the cloth you’re using is clean. And normally you would wash it first. And then wrap the cloth around.” He ties it closed and turns it over, laying his own palm on top of it for a second, a small burst of warmth grazing him in the cold, before unwrapping it once more. “Take it off and wash the wound every day until it heals. If you find yourself without a bandage, moss always works, too.</p><p>Sokka nods, flexes his unwounded hand, and then looks across at the snow. “What do we do now?” he asks quietly, leaning in towards Hakoda’s chest.</p><p>“We need to pay him our respects.”</p><p>He looks up at his father. “Are you gonna bury him? Like Great Gran-Gran?”</p><p>Hakoda is looking up as well, at the sky churning an icy grey, like a gentle reminder of a storm yet to come, and doesn’t say a word. Instead, he walks over to the puffin seal, and Sokka follows.</p><p>“Come here, Sokka. This creature—”</p><p>
  <em>“Akung.”</em>
</p><p>“—Akung,” his father agrees. “Akung is a gift. All life is. And to show we value that life, even in death, we need to use up every single part of the body that once gave it life. Accept it as a gift. It’s a sign of respect. Do you know what the tent that keeps the snow off your head is made of? The soles of you and Katara’s shoes?”</p><p>He shakes his head.</p><p>“Sealskin,” he says. “The lamps are fueled by its blubber. It feeds us sausage—lets us cut up and freeze the rest for days when it’s harder to get by. We harvest its life so it can live on and have a greater meaning beyond its body.” He leans in, and his breath is warm despite the cold outside. “Hunting is <em>providing,</em> Sokka. It’s a man’s way of loving his family. It’s a man’s way of gifting life.”</p><p>“Wow,” Sokka whispers, and there’s a feeling in his chest again—swelling and swelling, but refusing to crash. He jumps up and down, tugging his father by the sleeve.</p><p>“I wanna go hunting again today. Where’s your harpoon?”</p><p>Hakoda chuckles. “We already have more than enough for right now—”</p><p>“—Oh, wait, I know where it is! Let me go get it for you!”</p><p>He starts. “What—no—Sokka,” he yells, running after him, “come back, that thing is not a toy!”</p>
<hr/><p>Anyone could have seen that Aang had the clear advantage chasing after the stray lemur that had decided to pop its cute little face into the Southern Air Temple, but Sokka didn’t really care. He keeps running while Aang breezes past him across the walls on a ball of air.</p><p><em>No one</em> beats him in a hunt.</p><p>“What—no fair!” he protests as Aang runs towards the balcony the lemur flew off of and just <em>jumps </em>straight down.</p><p>He watches the two vanish, incredulous, then slowly grabs onto an overgrown branch poking out near the ledge. He tests it with a few good shakes—it can probably handle his body. He ropes himself around, crossing his arms and his legs, and grunts and writhes his way up, until he’s back on two feet.</p><p>It’s just an ocean of green. There are far too many trees here, more than he could have ever imagined (though to be fair, the most he could imagine back home in the tundra is probably one). At first, his steps are uncertain—easing out the territory from branch to branch to branch, each one like a world of its own—and then he nearly snaps one off and decides to just wait up in the foliage instead.</p><p><em>Wait for the right moment to strike</em>, he hears his father tell him as he scratches himself from the leaves tickling his shoulders and armpits. So he stays up there. It’s when he hears chittering and the unmistakable sound of Aang’s laughter that he lets go of everything else and simply swings his machete, picturing the graceful, fluid aim of a harpoon soaring through the air.</p><p>He ends up lodging it into the bark.</p><p>“What—” Aang says, panting, as they both watch the lemur fly off once more. “No fair!”</p><p>Sokka grins, pulling the blade out of the tree. “You—unh!—you may have your magical flying…<em>swooshy</em> stuff, but I’m the one with the machete.” He looks up once he has his machete in his grasp again, and frowns. “Aang?”</p><p>He’s already gone. He slides off the tree, gets a few unpleasant splinters in the process, and picks them out as he wanders the rest of the ruins. Most of them have leaves and fat brown and green vines eating away at them, and he finds it hard to imagine Aang living here like he claims to.</p><p>He stops at a mural, so big it spans a wall probably more than three times his height. The other walls that used to hug its presence beside it are long gone, and a few of the faces in the picture are sliced away by dirt and grime, but Sokka can make out a few bison, some monks holding hands (oh, so they <em>were</em> all bald, that wasn’t just an Aang thing), a few lemurs floating in the air or among the trees or scurrying across the ground. There’s something on the side etched into the stone that he can’t make out—short, thick lines forming letters that stick too close to one another and form a chunk that looks largely out of place. Probably an old Air Nomad language. He finds a more readable script on the opposite side, but it still sounds archaic and clunky on his tongue.</p><p>“Live together with all respect,” he mutters, squinting, then waves his hand and walks onwards. “Sounds kind of patronizing.”</p><p>He finally catches up to Aang behind a wall of dusty curtains, and coughs his way in.</p><p>“Hey, Aang, you find my dinner yet?”</p><p>But Aang doesn’t answer. He’s on his knees, sobbing, and Sokka’s chest tightens a little as the sound mixes in with the lemur’s chirps in the background. He sighs.</p><p>“Aang, I wasn’t really gonna eat the lemur,” he says, places a single hand on his shoulder like his father always did. “Oka—<em>oh man.”</em></p><p>The lemur clatters through the bones just as Sokka looks up, and for a moment, he doesn’t even register the fire nation regalia on nearly all of them. All he can see are the skulls and ribs and knuckles, all twisted in painful positions like a splintered circle bowing down to the skeleton in the center. He wears a bead necklace, with the symbol of air hanging from the middle.</p><p><em>Shit.</em> Sokka backs away from the scene a little—later, he finds out this was a good idea. Aang proves difficult to calm down. Like, really difficult. Like, starts glowing with the rage of a thousand past lives difficult.</p><p>Well, at least the stupid lemur helped rip the bandage off. He knows Katara wouldn’t have dared.</p><p>Aang is silent as Katara leads him back to the temple. Sokka is silent, too, but his stomach isn’t. He slips off, back to the trees. He’d rather not get mixed up in all this spirit stuff, if he can help it.</p><p>The fruits here are bright and strange, nothing like the dull purple-grey of the sea prunes back home. He slowly edges his way up to the top of a tree again, and peers through the green until he spots something soft, round, and pale orange. He reaches for it and stumbles, falls flat on his thick branch. The wood pokes at his chin.</p><p>He stares up, in disbelief, the fruit now in the hands of a lemur who eyes him curiously. He glares back.</p><p>“You again!” he hisses.</p><p>It tilts its head, flicks its tail, and scurries up the next tree. Sokka doesn’t even think about the branches this time as he follows. He doesn’t need to. It’s like he feels something else guiding him, letting him flit through the trees like he’s meant to be here even though he hasn’t even learned to climb one until today.</p><p>Hmm. He must be hungrier than he thought.</p><p>He ends up losing sight of the lemur, but there is fruit on this tree—shiny and smaller, reddish purple. He reaches—he loses again.</p><p>“Okay, two times just does it!” he yells, gets his machete out and aims it at the fruit as the creature scurries upwards. It soars off, the blade sinks into wood again, and Sokka slaps himself on the forehead. He forgot the damn thing could fly. He yanks it out, leaps down, and gives the tree a string of kicks.</p><p>“Stupid—air people—and their stupid—flying animals—” He ends with a yelp as a fruit falls off the tree and lands in his hands. He blinks, and then smirks, flinging his trophy up and puffing chest out.</p><p><em>“Aha!”</em> he yells, and hears it echo faintly. The lemur isn’t anywhere in sight. He’s not sure why he feels mildly disappointed, but he shakes it off and thumbs the fruit to see if there’s any bugs in it.</p><p>It’s overripe and splatters in his face.</p>
<hr/><p>They decide to name the lemur Momo, after the moon peach he steals from Sokka just as they’re about to leave.</p><p>“I still think we should call him <em>dirty little thief</em> instead,” Sokka proclaims. He puts his arms behind his head, leaning back against Appa’s saddle.</p><p>“Aw, come on, Sokka, you don’t really hate him, do you? He gave you food!”</p><p>“Well, <em>I</em> could have gotten that food by <em>myself.”</em></p><p>Katara rolls her eyes. “Excuse my brother and his massive ego.” She picks Momo up, and he chirps and chitters and squirms as he kicks the air so she places him in her lap. “I can’t believe you were trying to kill this thing. He’s so cute!”</p><p>“Don’t worry,” Aang says. “Sokka told me he wasn’t really going to do it.”</p><p>Sokka gets up now, shifts uncomfortably. “Um…yeah. About that, I actually was.”</p><p>“What?” Aang looks horrified as he turns away from steering Appa, just to gawk at him. “But—but, he’s so cute!” He says, like that’s the only excuse any of them could come up with.</p><p>“Yeah, well, if you’re small and cute, you get eaten by bigger, hungrier, less cute things.” He shrugs and picks at his teeth. “That’s just the way the world works. Nothing personal.”</p><p>“What made you change your mind?”</p><p>Sokka blinks. That sure is a question. He has to think about it for a minute.</p><p>“You, actually,” he says finally, and it comes out a little softer than he means it to.</p><p>Aang shakes his head. “Huh?”</p><p>“Your people don’t—<em>didn’t</em>—<em>don’t</em> hunt, do they?” He starts, then corrects himself, then corrects himself again when Katara glares at him.</p><p>“No. We were taught all life is sacred.”</p><p>The ease he says that with sort of makes Sokka’s spine straighten in place, and he opens his mouth to say something different, but then thinks better of it. He swallows. “Right. Well, it’d probably be disrespectful of me to hunt on your own turf.”</p><p>Katara snickers and picks up Momo again, shoving him towards Sokka. “Aww, did the big tough hunter macho man feel bad about hurting this cute widdle face?”</p><p><em>“No,</em> it was a matter of cultural appreciation,” he snaps. “And <em>you,”</em> he says, jabbing a finger at the lemur. “We’re not gonna be on Air Nomad land soon enough, so if we end up alone and I’m starving, I can’t make any promises.”</p><p>Momo presses his ears flat against his head and chitters.</p>
<hr/><p>Sokka’s vision is hazy as he wakes up, but the first thing he knows for sure is that he is <em>not</em> supposed to be here.</p><p>Thick stalks of bamboo lean away from him on either side as he tilts up his chin, still pressed against the ground stomach-first. They make him feel small. And then slowly, he gets to his knees and then pushes himself up, and they still loom down at the exact same angle. That’s when his eyes make their way up to the sky, and he realizes he can’t see the tips of the stalks; they keep shooting up for infinity. The sky shifts, gurgles unpleasantly like it’s alive. And then a stalk of bamboo uproots itself and noodles away into the clouds. He starts running as fast as he can.</p><p>Oh, he is <em>so</em> getting out of this place.</p><p>He stops when it looks like he’s going in circles, nervously eyes and slowly brushes a large rock he finds to make sure it isn’t alive, and then sits on it, head in his hands, and sighs. What had he done before he ended up here? He remembers a village—he squints—yeah, that’s right—a small, rickety Earth Kingdom village, all waiting for Aang to rid their place of some evil spirit—except Sokka had thought it was far too unfair, to let some kid take down a monster while they all hid in the shadows like cowards—so he’d run outside, gotten out his boomerang, and—</p><p>“Oh,” he manages weakly, remembering the harmless twang his boomerang gave as it struck the monster’s butt. He gets up, kicks at the dirt, lets the realization simmer a little longer in his head until he’s angry enough, and yells up at the weird, swirly sky.</p><p>“Are you <em>fucking</em> kidding me?!”</p><p>The Spirit World? The damned <em>Spirit World?</em> The one time he takes action like a Water Tribe warrior should, rushes into battle as an act of bravery, without thinking, despite everyone dragging him down, and he gets punished by getting trapped in the Spirit World? And<em> he</em> was the only damn one? Why didn’t Hei Bai capture—oh, he doesn’t know—the <em>Avatar?</em> If a spirit wanted to eat someone, shouldn’t Aang be on top of that list? Sokka should’ve been a bowl of jook next to Aang’s five-flavor soup, a kale cookie to grilled meat kebabs, plain mochi to roasted lobster crab—<em>man,</em> he’s hungry.</p><p>It takes him a moment, but he grabs his machete hesitantly. He’s not too keen on the thought of having Spirit World meat inside him, but he’d rather later have food poisoning in the real world than starve in this one. He’s bound to catch something—he knows there’s more life around him than he can see at the moment—he can feel it, like it’s pulsating around him in tandem with each breath, and it makes him scared that he’s losing his mind just a little bit.</p><p>There—he spots something small, weaving its way through the stalks. He goes for a jog at first, then arches forward to pick up his speed. Whatever this thing is, he’ll be faster.</p><p>For some reason, it’s easier when he closes his eyes; like he’s being pulled towards the rustling of the leaves and clunks of hard stalks, like he’s not even running at all, just floating through a current. He doesn’t notice when he shuts them. He<em> does</em> notice when he feels an odd burst of heat, and opens them again.</p><p>He frowns. Nothing around him even resembles fire. Maybe he’s having a heat flash. When people are hungry they can get heat flashes, right? Maybe he needs to eat soon—fuck, maybe he’s <em>dying.</em></p><p>He grabs his stomach and groans, then hears something echo, more low and gravelly, in response. He tenses. The stalks clunk together again. He watches, a few feet away, as something slithers out.</p><p>Sokka finds it resembles a mink snake the closest—the kinds back home that would bite if you got too close, but not do any lasting damage. Except this one’s a little thicker, with a large tail that flicks lazily, and something tucked into its side that catches the light just a little different enough to look suspiciously like a wing. He scowls. Does every animal he meets these days have to fly? He wants to yell, <em>Okay, Universe, I get it. I was sketchy about Appa and now you wanna shove it down my throat that I was wrong. You can stop now, thanks! </em>But he doesn’t—instead, he just mumbles, “Reptile meat. That’ll be new,” and lunges from behind.</p><p>Huge mistake. Huge, huge, huge mistake. Huge—</p><p>This thing is fucking <em>huge.</em></p><p>It instantly morphs at least five times larger while Sokka’s in the air, about to swing his machete, and glows red, tail splitting like bark to let loose something the size of the bamboo stalks themselves. The wings spread out as it growls, smoke pouring from its snout. Sokka’s very proud at the fact that he didn’t wet himself.</p><p>His mouth grows dry. <em>A dragon.</em> He’s no longer a hunter now—he’s a warrior. He skirts around the edge of the animal’s tail and seesaws the weight of the machete in his hand—then scans for a possible weak spot—maybe the skin right at the top of the wing—and jumps.</p><p>He gets slammed into a thicket of bamboo. It does not go <em>clunk</em> against his head.</p>
<hr/><p>Heat. He feels it again when he wakes up, but it’s not a sharp flash. It’s soft, liquid, floating around him and expanding with each breath.</p><p>He rubs his head and groans, sits up, crosses his legs, and looks down at what’s set near him. Tea.</p><p>The cup is wooden, a little rough around the edges. He peers into the reddish brown liquid and watches his reflection scrunch its nose.</p><p>“Ah, finally awake, I see.”</p><p>Sokka jolts, tips over the cup with his leg, and nearly falls over like a beetleworm on its back; he grabs fistfuls of dirt to balance himself, tilts his chin up and finds an old man up in his face, offering him the cup once more.</p><p>“You nearly dropped your tea! That would have been a shame.” The corners of his eyes crinkle, lifting up his white mustache. “One of life’s greatest joys is sharing tea with a stranger.”</p><p>Even though Sokka could have sworn feeling the weight of the wood tipping against his leg before he went down, the cup is still full. He squints in suspicion but grabs it anyways. The warmth fills him as he brings it closer to his face, not at all like the—</p><p>“Dragon!” he yells as the lizard flies in out of nowhere, small once more, settling itself on the old man’s palm. He wants to jerk backwards, but this tea smells really nice. He tries not to slosh it over himself as he slowly scoots away. The man scratches the thing under its chin, and Sokka gawks.</p><p>“Are you crazy? Stay away from that thing!” he says, pointing with his cup. “It nearly killed me!”</p><p>He raises an eyebrow. “No, you nearly killed yourself.”</p><p>“What—I did not! I was defending myself!” Sokka squeaks, his voice cracking. He drains half his cup out of anger, and slams it down next to him. “…This tea is good,” he mutters, in spite of himself.</p><p>The man smiles again, sets the lizard down next to him, and takes his own cup. “I do not think I have seen anyone try to hunt a spirit before,” he says. “But I think it is safe to say that they do not appreciate it. I believe Fang is expecting an apology.”</p><p>Sokka blinks, disbelieving. “Fang? You <em>named</em> that thing? Who are you, anyway?”</p><p>“Yes,” he says, ignoring the last question. “Well, it was more of a compromise. My old friend had at least ten names he wanted to use, so I helped him. He was always just a little indecisive, you see.” His smile seems heavier this time, just a little sad. “But you—you are quite decisive. You believed you could somehow singlehandedly defeat a dragon with nothing but a Southern Water Tribe machete. I had to step in before you got hurt any worse.”</p><p>“Hey, I’m not stupid, I knew I couldn’t win with just a machete. I had a <em>boomerang,</em> too—” Sokka starts with a huff, then freezes. “Wait…you stepped in?” He looks down. “You…saved me. But why? And why should I apologize to that thing? You just admitted you knew it was gonna hurt me! <em>And who are you, anyway?”</em></p><p>“You should not be so quick to judge something just because you do not understand it,” he says, and Sokka wonders if he has trouble hearing.</p><p>He shakes his head. “That’s where I’m gonna have to say you’re wrong. Judging is what keeps you alive. If I pick berries, I gotta <em>judge</em> whether they’re poisonous or not, and if I eat one and it gives me—I dunno—hives, I can’t just go, <em>oh, sorry, berry, I’ll </em>understand<em> you better next time, and maybe you won’t make my throat swell up, my bad!”</em></p><p>“Hmm,” the man says, as if seriously considering holding a conversation with the next cluster of berries he finds on a bush, and tilts his head at Sokka. “You are quite wise for your age.”</p><p>Sokka snorts. “Man, if only the others were around to hear that! Wait—” he gets up. “Aang. Katara. Where are they? Where’s my sister?”</p><p>“They are safe,” he tells Sokka. “But they are quite worried that you are not.”</p><p>“Then—” he starts, looks around and realizes every break in the thickets looks the same. Worry rises up, warm and liquid like the tea is making its way into his chest. “Then I need to get back to them!”</p><p>“And how, exactly, do you plan to return?”</p><p>He turns around and glares. “I just will, alright?” he snaps. “Just ‘cause I didn’t know you can’t go around <em>hunting dragons</em> in here doesn’t mean I can’t get myself out. I’ll find a way.”</p><p>“I never said you would not,” the old man replies, bemused. He pours himself another cup of tea, and absently strokes Fang with his free hand. “It is very likely you will get back home. You seem to have a special bond with the Spirit World.”</p><p>Sokka crosses his arms. “What? No, I don’t. If I hadn’t chosen to help Aang go fight that spirit, it never would’ve dragged me off. This is a coincidence. I don’t believe in all that <em>destiny great-beyond</em> stuff like everyone else does, okay? Actually—you know what? Maybe I just hit my head really hard, and this is all a dream,” he says, then nods. “Yeah—yeah, and the reason you won’t tell me who you are is because my brain doesn’t know who you are, either. Yep! All a dream.” He claps. He cups his hands around his mouth and calls out into the sky. “Alright, Sokka. Wake up. Wake up, time to wake up—! Huh?”</p><p>The man almost looks disappointed as he stares back at him. He gets up as well, his robes wafting gently around him.</p><p>“Our time grows short.”</p><p>“Oh, good,” Sokka says, “am I waking up then? Oh—oh, wait,” he falters, pressing his legs together. “I think that tea was real, actually. I need to pee now. Does, uh, the Spirit World have any bathrooms, by chance?”</p><p>The man doesn’t say anything, or if he does, Sokka can’t quite make it out. His form starts to flicker, and when Sokka rubs his eyes to find out if it’s just a trick of the light, he opens them back up feeling dizzy and lightheaded. He stumbles down, leans back to look at the man as his vision swims. His bead necklace is what stands out the most in the haze, large and wooden with a pendant in the center he tries to anchor his eyes on with no success.</p><p>“Wait a minute,” he murmurs. “I know who you are. Aren’t you—”</p><p>He blacks out.</p>
<hr/><p>Appa gives him the biggest, sloppiest, <em>grossest</em> lick he’s received in his entire life when he gets back.</p><p>“Woahhh! Take it easy, buddy,” he says, pushing fur out of his face and shaking slime off the left half of his body. He smacks his lips, and it feels like there’s spit inside his spit. Great.</p><p>He’s disoriented when he’s pulled into a hug—<em>again</em>—by Katara as they fly off on Appa once more, the village behind them shrinking into nothing like all of them always do, but he can’t say anything. Is it shame that’s rising to burn up his face? Or is he just embarrassed that Katara cries so easily?</p><p>“Take it <em>easy,”</em> he mutters again, wriggling out of her grasp. He digs around in their supplies for some fruit—supplies that<em> he</em> thought to ask the village for, that Katara thought was selfish. He will never understand that girl.</p><p>“Momo took it pretty easy,” she tells him, as the lemur flies over and perches himself on Sokka’s shoulder. “He was asleep the whole time. Nothing could wake him up.”</p><p>“Oh, I am hurt,” he tries to snark, but it ends up sounding oddly empty as he realizes, maybe he was, just a little.</p><p>“Do you remember anything from the Spirit World, Sokka?” Aang asks, his look almost pleading. “I need to be ready when I meet Roku. I gotta know everything I can.”</p><p>“Well—” he puts a finger up, falters, rests it against the side of his head.</p><p>“Nope, not a thing,” he says, frowning, then shrugs it off as he tosses his fruit in the air, lets the solid weight hit his palm like a sort of reassurance. “As far as I’m concerned, it was all a bad dream.”</p><p>Aang turns away to face the sky.</p><p>“Wow, I’m kind of jealous, Sokka. I wish the Spirit World would find me as boring as they found you.”</p><p>“What the—” he sputters, distracted just enough to let Momo steal the papaya out of his hand. “Hey!”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Hi! I actually have this fic all planned out to a T; I originally intended for it to be a oneshot and it ended up far too big for me to handle posting as just one thing. So I hope it reads just as well piece by piece. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯</p><p>Episodes referenced in this chapter: 1x03 (The Southern Air Temple), 1x07 (The Spirit World).</p><p>I've always been fascinated with how Sokka always ended up encountering Spirit stuff even though he constantly insists he's the most normal of the Gaang. Also I love him as a character so much it's unreal.</p><p>Thank you so much for reading! Thoughts and such are appreciated as always!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The wreckage of the Fire Temple brushes past Sokka’s face with a blazing, violent warmth, and it makes him realize just how much of it they’re surrounded by—not the wreckage, it seems like everywhere they go these days brings down a building or two, it just seems to be a part of existing within Aang’s general area.</p><p>The flames. The <em>heat.</em></p><p>And it starts raining down on them as they barely make it out clinging on for dear life to Appa’s saddle, so Sokka can’t imagine why, of all things, when the ash starts to sizzle against his shoulders, he shivers.</p><p>He’s never missed the snow so much in his life. At least during the flecks of ash floating down in the raids, he’d had the cold, solid ground to dig his sealskin boots into. Now he has the smell of a barbecue gone wrong, a worn-out, bumpy saddle, and a mouthful of smoke and flying bison fur.</p><p>He’s far, far from home. But there’s something oddly reflexive about the way he perks his head up after they fly out of the worst of it, to the slightly-less-worst of it (a thick cloud of smoke still lingers above their heads), and scans Katara and Aang’s legs, chests, arms, faces; and is only able to relax even a little after he knows for sure no one looks too hurt. But he doesn’t say anything—</p><p>“Is everyone alright?”</p><p>—He knows that Katara’s just waiting to ask anyways.</p><p>“Physically, yes,” Sokka replies, scooting back against the now concerningly bare spot of Appa’s saddle where their food used to be. Now it was just an empty sack of collateral Avatar damage. “Mentally, kinda trying to wrap my head around what the <em>fuck</em> just happened.”</p><p>His sister ignores him: expected. But Aang is still sitting curled in a little ball, fingers clasped just below his knees. Sokka’s cursing usually cheers him up, and it usually cheers Sokka up, too, because at least someone appreciates his colorful language, even if it was a tiny bald kid who lived up in a hippie temple and had probably never heard a cuss word in his life. Sokka even makes sure to precisely drop <em>fuck,</em> the <em>king </em>of all cusses, and Aang keeps staring vacantly at the sky like he’s made of stone. So he tries again, louder this time, maybe half-offended and maybe half-worried, but the end dies out in a squeak as Katara angrily elbows him in the gut.</p><p>He sits back and frowns. What had gone <em>on</em> in there? Roku knew the kid was only twelve, right?</p><p>He recalls Aang’s insistence on flying to this temple by himself, and something inside him sinks as he imagines being twelve and alone in a shady place like this. And then something rises up—up up and up, as he sees Aang turn around for just a fleeting moment, and catches the lines above, to the side, below, between, his eyes.</p><p><em>Anger,</em> Sokka realizes with a start, because all of this is so, so, so, <em>so</em> unfair.</p><p>It makes him<em> angry, </em>how being twelve is the new sixteen. He has never gone ice-dodging before, never had that proud step into manhood with a dot or a curve or a moon painted with his father’s thumb against his forehead, and he doubts he will anytime soon. But what he does get to watch is Katara midwife as soon as she hits twelve (well, he doesn’t actually <em>watch</em>, that’s gross), burn her fingers at the hearth trying to make puffin seal stew the way Mom did; and now there was <em>this.</em> Whatever mess this was.</p><p>(Well—he knows the mess is Aang, or has decided to take the shape of Aang for the time being, anyway, but Sokka is not mad at him. He is <em>not</em> mad at Aang, he’s not an idiot. It’s the war’s fault, after all, isn’t it, that the Avatar had to grow up so quickly? So he’s mad at the war, he decides, then <em>does </em>feel like an idiot for a moment because yeah, no shit, <em>everyone’s</em> mad at the war. What makes him so special?)</p><p>The anger simmers quietly as the colors of dusk melt into the black of nighttime, and Sokka flops back against the saddle and looks up at the moon. Something about it cools him down a little; maybe the stories he grew up with about the Spirits pushing and pulling at the tide back home, stuff he didn’t even really listen to but still found ease in because of how the elders of the Southern Water Tribe just all <em>really </em>had a way with words, keeping a steady but flexible pace, allowing each syllable to flow into the other like they weren’t even trying. Sokka’s cheeks flush a little at the memories. He was never that good at public speaking.</p><p>He had waited, dammit. He waited, just like he should, until the right time to grow up, and then the Universe took that away from him.</p><p>The full moon seems to guide him, almost, with its push and pull, as he silently slides off Appa’s saddle when they land. He twirls his machete in his hands.</p><p>“I’m going hunting.”</p><p>Katara stares in disbelief. “Sokka, it’s the middle of the night!”</p><p>“And? When was the last time any of us ate?”</p><p>
  <em>“Is food all you can ever think about?”</em>
</p><p>It’s said scornfully, meant to be said hurtfully, and it works. Sokka ends up stumbling on his words so bad even a single one can’t come out of his mouth. Instead he continues to gape, like a dying fish, as he realizes, despite how hard Katara tries to make her glare at him be, that she’s so <em>small,</em> that Aang is so <em>small,</em> as they both huddle together on the ground, effectively making them even smaller. And then even smaller, as the dim light cuts out pieces of their bodies in sharp shadows.</p><p>“Food is important,” he says, finally, quieter than he means to. He’s not sure Katara gets it, or if she ever will, but her expression softens.</p><p>“Whatever, fine, just—at least take Momo with you so you aren’t alone.”</p><p>“No, wait, Sokka said he’d eat Momo if he was hungry and they were alone together!”</p><p>“What—” Sokka splutters as Aang actually speaks for the first time in hours, then scowls. “Oh, come on, Aang, I’m not gonna eat him <em>now.</em> We’re in together too deep.” He waves a hand. “He can be my…hunting polar dog, or something.” He crouches over near Momo, points his finger towards the beginnings of the forest they’ve landed near the edge of. “Onwards, boy, lead me to our prey!”</p><p>He yelps, nearly tripping over his feet as Momo’s wings snap open and he flies off into the darkness. He blinks at Aang and Katara.</p><p>“Huh. I didn’t know that would work,” he mutters, then runs off too.</p><p>Whoever the Moon spirit is, they decide to be kind to Sokka tonight, and his path is lit up just enough every step of the way through the thickets and the trees. He eventually finds Momo with his tail curled around a branch, noisily munching on an apple.</p><p>“Wow,” Sokka huffs, leaning back against the tree, “Is food all you can ever think about?”</p><p>Momo freezes for a second, even his mouth open in mid-chew, then shoves the half-eaten apple in Sokka’s face.</p><p>He takes it and frowns. “Ewwww.”</p><p>But he turns it over anyways because the thought of wasting food seems even worse, and takes a bite into the half Momo didn’t touch. And then he spots something—darting in the distance on all fours, and drops everything in pursuit. He hears Momo scramble behind him for the apple.</p><p>He may have caught sight of the thing, but he’s not close enough to make a move just yet; so he weaves in between trunks, presses his back against the bark and peers out as swiftly as he can each time, making new routes and reroutes when necessary because the first rule about hunting he had learned apart from making sure you get your prey is to make sure you don’t become the landscape’s prey itself along the way. Not that this small Earth forest is any match for the icy bite of the tundra. But Sokka’s still having a hard time getting used to these trees and all the little tree-things that live up in them.</p><p>He finally reaches a point of compromise, a sturdy trunk near the break of a meadow where the creature’s stopped in, deciding to graze, probably, and he stops and hugs the bark, peers out one last time as the sweat across his nose finally gets a chance to stop slipping around and set into chilly little droplets in the night air. It’s those little stripes of cold, the chill pale cast of the moon, that make him feel right at home. The feeling quickly dissolves as he tries to clamber up the tree.</p><p>It’s a series of grunts and one curse he tries to whisper out more than any actual climbing, and then he ends up banging his ankle against the bark so hard his eyes start to water as he holds back the noise. But he succeeds, right up until the branch he’s aiming to crouch on whacks him right in the gut, and he breaks loose with a <em>For the love of fucking</em>—and realizes what he’s done far too late. He blinks, the meadow’s empty, and he hangs miserably from the stupid branch like wet laundry until he hoists himself up, and nearly falls off again.</p><p>“Gah, when did you get here?”</p><p>Momo leaps off his shoulders, a little jittery, tail writhing behind him like a worm, and launches himself to a neighboring tree. He’s in full pursuit of something Sokka can’t quite make out in the dim light—probably a bug. But it’s Momo’s paws, the way they press with abandon onto the tough spines of bark along the trunk as he silently curls his way across it, that catches Sokka’s eyes, sets the gears in his head in high motion.</p><p>“Ohh. Friction. But you have pads on your little lemur hands. I can’t do that without getting splinters—” he begins, then raises his eyebrows as he glances at something nestled between the cracks of bark. He swipes at it, turns it over in his hands, and the beginnings of a smile stretch across his face. “Unless…”</p><p>He drags the moss out over his palms, the fuzz of it somewhere between a prick and a tickle, and ties it around the front of his hands, right below the knuckles. He breathes in deep, for no good reason, then presses, tentatively, at the cracks and grooves of the trunk in front of him, and the beginning of the smile breaks into a humungous grin. He curls himself around the trunk, too, instead of going for it straight up, and silently finds his way up the hostile branch again in less than half the time before. It’s not enough for him now, drunk on his victory, and he climbs again, higher.</p><p>No.</p><p>Even higher.</p><p>The wind picks up a little up here, and he nearly laughs and whoops at this strange sense of freedom; from a little perch where he can see the entire world, one he never knew was quite so big, until he realizes he needs to keep quiet. He catches sight of the creature ambling its way back into the field. Momo joins him up top soon after and places a bug belly-up between them, looking at Sokka expectantly. He blinks.</p><p>“Okay, I know I’m not a picky eater, but I think beetles are a pretty good place to draw the line at.” He shoves it away with the edge of his pinky, then shoves Momo himself when he starts crunching off the head obnoxiously loud.</p><p>
  <em>“Shh!”</em>
</p><p>He can make out the creature a little better now from up here, his eyes fully adjusted to the moonlight. It’s a little larger than an Arctic hare—probably equal to two of them put together. And there’s a tail, waving back and forth like a bushy flame, so when Sokka gets his boomerang out, he makes note to keep it out of the way of his aim.</p><p>It takes only a second for the <em>thwock</em> to reach his ears once he’s thrown it, and the thing crumples, stunned, while he jumps back down and makes his way to deliver the final blow, with a little snort of triumph. Good old Boomy never misses.</p><p>Finishing the job isn’t too hard; it used to scare him, back when he first started, when his father actually handed the harpoon over to him instead of just letting him watch. He remembers how much pressure his father put—both on his words and on Sokka’s shoulder—on making a clean hit. There was a dignity that should come with death, because it would transform into life for the people it fed. It’s a cycle his father often cited, one he once again regrets not paying much attention to. But he’s glad to have some vague semblance of Hakoda’s voice, just the deep crests and booming peaks, playing in the back of his head, as he wipes his machete clean. He hoists up the creature, something that looks like a mix between a fox and a hare, so he calls it such, and makes his way back through the trees.</p><p>He’s halfway through when he digs a heel into the dirt and slaps himself on the forehead.</p><p>“Shit, wait, Aang’s a vegetarian!”</p><p>He groans, and Momo gives out a prolonged chitter Sokka takes as an agreement. He looks to the sky in frustration, then back down again, and doesn’t even care that his voice is cracking a little as he speaks.</p><p>“Why does he have to make this so hard for me?” He blinks. “Why do…<em>I</em> have to make this so hard for me? We could just get stuff at the market tomorrow at the next village we come across before we accidentally end up razing it to the ground or something! Convenience!” he yells up in Momo’s face, hands pinching at the air. “I’m forsaking <em>convenience</em>, what is <em>wrong</em> with me? Why am I doing this?”</p><p>Momo chitters again.</p><p>Sokka sighs, puts his head in his palms. “Yeah, I know why I’m doing this. They don’t know what they’re doing,” he says, but when he peels his hands away from his face, he’s shaking his head. “I mean—<em>I </em>don’t know what I’m doing, either. But at least I can make sure none of us di—” he winces, unsure exactly how confident he can be in that promise after they barely escaped arson that was…technically <em>committed</em> by one of them. “—I can make sure none of us go hungry. I mean, that’s good middle ground. If we die, it’s not gonna be of starvation. I think that’s the worst way to go.”</p><p>He finds the ground underneath him a little steadier now as he walks on to scan the trees around him, and stops at a low-hanging branch Momo perches himself on, his green eyes unusually bright in the shadows.</p><p>“I’m the adult here, I have to provide.”</p><p>Momo’s ears prick up a little at the sound of Sokka’s voice, but he remains silent.</p><p>Sokka expels a little breath, gives a half-smile. “Yeah, I know you can’t understand me. But it makes me feel better if I pretend you do. But I need you to just try for a moment, ‘cause we need to <em>go get some</em> <em>fruuuuit,”</em> he says, dragging out the word as long as he can. “You know what that is? <em>Fruit.</em> Like, uh—”</p><p>He picks a rock up off the ground with his free hand, the one that isn’t slinging the foxhare over his shoulder, and feels the hard little grooves dip under his fingers as he twirls it around for Momo. He accidentally bites into it instead of pantomiming, then spits the dirt out and wheezes.</p><p>“Ack! Fruit.”</p><p>Momo blinks at him, slowly, then grabs ahold of the rock, bites down on it too, and promptly lobs it between Sokka’s eyes before scurrying up the tree. Sokka scowls a little as he rubs the injury, sits down cross-legged and leans back against the bark, and sighs. He jolts when something hits him on the head.</p><p>“Ow!”</p><p>He watches it bounce off perfectly into his hands—an apple. He looks up and gets a strange feeling of mounting tension as Momo’s eyes peer back at him from a high branch before scurrying back into the leaves.</p><p>“Ohhh no no no no—”</p><p>More apples fall almost immediately, each one accompanied by a small chirp.</p><p>“Ow ow ow—<em>alright,</em> I think we have enough!” he snaps.</p><p>Oddly enough, Momo seems to get it, and Sokka stashes away the fruit in the crook of his arm, feeling the weight of food tug him on either side of his body now, like a fulcrum desperate to gain balance with each step.</p><p>He puffs a little breath of relief when he’s finally back to the campsite, the gentle snores of Katara and Aang and the—<em>rumble</em>—of Appa putting him at ease. He grabs the wood in the corner, from a fire Katara probably meant to start but never did, and makes one of his own. It crackles to life as he gets on with skinning the foxhare.</p><p>Momo tries to paw at it and Sokka slaps him away, scrunching his face up. “Momo, no, that’s so gross! Aren’t you like, related to hares? That’s like if I ate a hogmonkey!”</p><p>He trims off the fat first, like his father taught him, throws a little in to feed the fire and watches it glow from weak yellow to orange in delight as it gobbles it up. He seals the rest away in a container, if they needed to burn something later.</p><p>Next is the meat itself, and he remembers, so many times, how he accidentally ended up slicing too thick that his family ended up with freshly singed blubbered seal steaks instead of jerky at least once a month. And yet, his father still let him do it every time. He feels sweat drip down his nose, sweat he forgot to wipe off earlier, as he starts, trembling at first, with the first slice. It’s a little choppy in the places he panicked and yanked the blade out to start over, but soon he finds his rhythm, and the flames dance along to the tune.</p><p>The jerky dries over the fire—actual jerky!—and a small burst of pride swells up inside Sokka. Ha! And to think his sister said he never learned how to cook.</p><p>He feels something brush past his leg when he slides the jerky off the rod he’s holding. A tail. He watches it squirm around, then rolls his eyes and gives a small laugh.</p><p>“Alright, you earned it.” He tears a chunk off the first strip in the batch and tosses it to Momo.</p><p>Momo catches it in one hand, cocks his head to the side before crunching away, and Sokka looks back at the flames in front of him until he hears a yelp.</p><p>He turns around, and Momo’s brushing a limp paw against the dirt, the rest of his body stiff and shaking. Sokka frowns and scoots in closer.</p><p>“What the…you’re hurt.”</p><p>It’s as if the fire isn’t there anymore, like just this night is a little dome of snow and ice back South, as he reaches for a canteen, slowly splashing the water over the paw he grabs in his hand. It’s still an angry shade of red, but the wound doesn’t look so bad once it’s been washed.</p><p>He still has moss, tucked away in his bag. He lets his thumb press down, through Momo’s fur and against his skin, as he begins to wrap it up. When he ties it, Momo leans his head down with his tongue out, and Sokka gives him a light slap on the cheek.</p><p>“No. Bad Momo. Don’t lick it, you’ll make it worse.”</p><p>He uses the last few splashes of the canteen to put the fire out, takes a bite of his own jerky and coughs it down because it’s a little too rough and nearly refuses to go down his throat, and presses his knees up to his chest. His eyes drift shut.</p><p>Yeah, he could probably tough out the next few forests much easier next time.</p><p>Daylight comes through in little cracks between his slowly opening eyelids, his sister’s hand shaking him awake. He swipes at the drool he guesses is dried under his mouth as she lets out a grunt of disgust.</p><p>“Did you seriously go catch something?”</p><p>He shakes off the rest of his sleepiness, rustles through his bag and pulls out a few browned strips of meat to shove in Katara’s face. “Uh, yeah. Foxhare jerky. You’re welcome.”</p><p>She tears away at a piece with such ease that Sokka gapes for a moment.</p><p>“It’s kind of bland,” she says finally.</p><p>“Well,<em> excuse</em> me for not having all the royal spices on hand, your majesty.”</p><p>“Um—” Aang begins uncertainly, putting up a finger, and Sokka waves at him.</p><p>“Yeah, I gotcha.”</p><p>He tosses Aang an apple or three, and watches him cradle them in his arms and smile at him in pleasant surprise.</p><p>“Oh! Thanks.”</p><p>“So, are we ready to head out?”</p><p>Appa growls in agreement, but Sokka glances away, rudely awakening Momo by plopping him up from under his arms like a limp ragdoll.</p><p>“Uh—yeah. Just give me a second.”</p><p>He walks off and kneels down at a stream, flowing parallel a few miles from the campsite, and unties the knot of moss over Momo’s paw. And then he slaps him again.</p><p>“No! No licking!”</p><p>Momo’s limp, compliant as Sokka picks him up and makes him hover over the stream, then hisses and curls up tight when he actually grazes the water’s surface.</p><p>“Oh, please,” Sokka huffs, “So it’s fine when it’s from a canteen but not a river?”</p><p>Momo screeches, thwacks against Sokka’s wrists with his tail. Sokka keeps pressing him down against the water and getting lurched back at the last moment.</p><p>“Come on—come on—come <em>on</em>—ow!” Momo wriggles free, leaps up onto Sokkas head and slips a little, yanking onto his ponytail to keep balance. Sokka can’t see much, but he knows what’s happening as he feels the weight of Momo’s paws start to shift. He snatches him off with a yelp, shakes him around as he explodes.</p><p>“Stop—<em>licking it!”</em></p><p>He hears laughter behind him. He turns around and shoots a glare.</p><p>“What?” he snaps, setting Momo aside.</p><p>“Nothing,” Katara says, while Aang’s still giggling. “I think it’s kind of cute how you guys are bonding so fast.”</p><p>Sokka rolls his eyes. “Not like I had a choice or anything. Someone needs to be around him or he’ll end up killing himself.”</p><p>More laughter. He narrows his eyes. “…What?”</p><p>Aang points in the direction of the stream, and Sokka turns around to find Momo backstroking through the current, purring and twitching his ears in pleasure. He bites the inside of his cheek.</p><p>“Okay, you cleaned it off now.” He tries to reach out across the water. “Now get back here so we can leave.”</p><p>Momo hisses again.</p><hr/><p>“You know, I think I did you one wrong, buddy,” Sokka says, propping himself up with his elbow against the ground as he crunches the last of the food on his skewer. “Beetles aren’t so bad after all.”</p><p>The meat’s a little rubbery, sure, but something about the way it’s been cooked over the flame, crispy on the outside and chewy on the inside, like fried seal steaks, appeals to him. Or maybe the fact that he hasn’t eaten all day. He’s honestly a little offended when Katara and Aang gawk at him as he readily bites into it for the first time, offered up a serving by Tho and Due—yeesh, it’s not like he won’t try things just <em>because</em> they’re new. He just thinks it’s kind of stupid that a giant tree sent out spirit waves to call Aang down into this swamp and nearly get them all killed. But he’s alive, whatever. He’ll take it.</p><p>Everyone’s asleep now, and he really has no idea how other than pure exhaustion, because a swamp full of stinky fog and freaky spirits is the last place he’d feel comfortable dozing off in. He dangles his empty skewer above Momo’s head, snorting as he watches him curl his tail up in anticipation and grab for it over and over.</p><p>He manages to swipe it down, once, with so much force that it backflips in the air and nearly pokes Sokka’s eye out, but he watches it arc anyways, pierce through the night sky.</p><p>And there she was.</p><p>The moon’s tinted green, almost queasy to look at in the overgrowth of the swamp, but Sokka thinks he would’ve felt his stomach churning no matter what. It’s the same way it curled itself up during the siege, as the princess of the Northern Water Tribe fell limp into her arms.</p><p>He had made an ill-timed joke, not even a day later, about how Hahn wouldn’t be getting any betrothal perks any time soon. He’s lucky only Aang was there to hear it, and shake his head, disappointed; Katara had gotten so good at waterbending so fast that he figures she would have killed him instantly without even trying.</p><p>And he’s not sure why, of all things, that stupid joke is what’s in his mind when he finds Yue’s image flickering in the swamp. She looked angry. Maybe he was thinking about the things she would have been angry at him for. And for some reason, it’s <em>that,</em> that little dig at Yue’s self-important, arrogant, dumb-as-all-shit prick of a fiancé that he wants to say he’s sorry for.</p><p>Maybe because he had said it in the middle of the night, under the full moon’s glow.</p><p>Maybe because there were some things he couldn’t even dream about saying sorry for, because sorry wouldn’t even be close to cutting it.</p><p>“You said I didn’t protect you,” he murmurs, and saying just that seems to take the weight off from on top of his chest, if not to place it right in the air, out of his mouth, and into his hands, ugly and solid like stone. He swallows.</p><p>“You were right.”</p><p>“She never said that, Sokka. That was your vision. That was how you viewed your own past.”</p><p>The voice is booming yet not all there, flimsy on the edges like an echo yet shooting him right between the eyes. Sokka springs to his feet.</p><p>“Who was that? Who’s there?” Silence.</p><p>Sokka juts his chin out. “I’m warning you, I’m armed! I’ve got a skewer in one hand a lemur on the other. And he is <em>vicious.</em> You do <em>not </em>wanna get on his bad side—what the—are you asleep?” he whines, flapping his arm until Momo slides down and slumps onto the ground. “Seriously?”</p><p>“This is a matter of destiny,” the voice booms again, and Sokka wants to strangle this invisible guy’s invisible throat. He is so, <em>so</em> tired of that word.</p><p>“It was Yue’s destiny to give her life to the Moon. It was a destiny she chose to fulfill. It would be unfair for you to take the blame for it.”</p><p>“Well, isn’t her destiny a little unfair, too?” he snaps. “She was just a kid!”</p><p>“And so are you,” the voice replies, and Sokka freezes and clenches his jaw, glaring at absolutely nothing in particular.</p><p>“No,” he says after a painful moment of quiet. Each word shoots out icier, more clipped than the last.</p><p>“No, no, I’m <em>different.</em> You don’t understand.”</p><p>“Oh, Sokka. Did you not just learn from the great banyan-grove that all life is the same, connected?”</p><p>The breath he takes is measured, as he backs away and yanks his hair out of its wolf tail. “I don’t believe in that stuff. In fact, I don’t even know why I’m talking to you! You’re not real.” He spreads his arms out. “Nothing in this place is. I bet beetles don’t even taste that good and I’m just—slowly going crazy!” He tries to kick at a stray rock, nearly trips over Momo splayed out in the space between him and his tent, and curses.</p><p>“Just because Yue chose to fulfill her destiny does not mean that her destiny was not unfair.”</p><p>He turns around, in spite of himself. “Huh?”</p><p>“The world right now,” the voice begins, “is in a great state of imbalance. We must all play a part in ending this war, but some sacrifices end up greater than others.” And Sokka notices the way the voice tightens, like his father’s did so many years ago when he insisted with the tribe elders to take Sokka out to puffin seal territory. “And some fall down on people who are far too young to be bearing them.”</p><p>Sokka can feel the pressure of his teeth grinding down against each other, and he takes it as a warning that something inside him is about to explode. Usually, he thinks through it before it finds its way out.</p><p><em>Usually</em> isn’t too reliable of a word anymore in these times, he soon finds out.</p><p>“What do <em>you</em> know about sacrifice? You’re just a disembodied swamp spirit. You haven’t done a thing for this war.” His fists curl up. “<em>None</em> of you do. You just stay up in your little realm watching us all play soldier and then butt into our lives when it’s the last thing we need, act like you know everything about us, and leave us all alone to fuck up again—and again—and <em>again</em>—! Because of some…half-assed <em>destiny.</em> You’ll never understand what the war is like, so—so don’t even <em>think </em>about trying to.”</p><p>It’s only when he’s finished, breathless with his chest sunk in like a deflated balloon, all the words gone, that he realizes that he yelled at some sort of swamp god who could probably blast him to ashes on the spot. Or doom him to live the rest of his days out here as a badgerfrog. He rests a palm on his forehead, inwardly kicking himself; he doesn’t know what came over him so suddenly. It’s one of those pockets of rage that remind him there’s a reason he’s related to Katara.</p><p>He slumps in defeat, wondering if being a badgerfrog would mean living off even more of those freakishly large flies and beetles now, but then jerks his head up as he hears the voice sigh.</p><p>“You are right. Much of the responsibility to end this war has been passed down to your generation. It is far from a compromise and far from fair. I, myself, did try to deal back a strike once. But…” he trails off, something crackling near the edge. Something like shame.</p><p>“It was just not enough.”</p><p>It feels like a moment where a silent look of understanding, or comfort, or even just pain should be shared, or perhaps that’s just Sokka’s older sibling instinct kicking in. But there’s nowhere to even look at, so his love for self-preservation and recently-acquired disgust for anything related to frogs (give him a break, they gave him throatal-flap warts, they were slimy and pulsing <em>in his fucking mouth</em>) is stronger.</p><p>“Um…hey,” he starts uncertainly, shrugging. “No need to feel bad, you could always try again. Not like this war’s ending tomorrow or anything. Actually, wait—could it end tomorrow?” He taps a finger on his chin. “Can’t you just use your spirit magic to make Ozai have a little accident? Or…oh! Make him sick with your swamp water? I’m pretty sure the Fire Nation’s too dry to stash any frozen frogs in. Uh—you’re not gonna smite me now, are you?” He adds weakly after a heavy bout of silence.</p><p>There’s something light and airy about the way the voice laughs back at him—oh, well, of <em>course,</em> not like the swamp spirit had the looming threat of <em>genocidal imperialism</em> to worry about in his waking hours—but something in it makes his own heart a little less heavy.</p><p>“I admire your resilience. I will do my best to respect your wishes. Goodbye for now, Sokka.”</p><p>“Huh…okay,” he finally says, after waiting out a few minutes to see if the last of the echoes had died out for good. He’s alone now, truly alone, and fatigue washes over him. He makes it back to his tent, squirms around in his sleeping bag for nearly half an hour, and then slips back out because something about it just doesn’t feel right.</p><p>He ends up getting back into his bag on the dirt outside, watching wispy clouds of fog float towards and on top of and away from the moon over and over and over.</p><p>He supposes he’ll never be truly alone.</p><p>And then he hears Momo chitter and scurry towards him, and he knows for a fact that he’s not going to be alone for a <em>long</em>-ass time, whether he likes it or not. A smile escapes him as he closes his eyes.</p><p>“Goodnight, Momo. Ewww, stop licking my face!”</p><hr/><p>Everything about today has made Sokka feel so stiff and tired and bored—and it was barely noon.</p><p>He raps twice on the door in front of him, and when it opens, he unfurls the flyer in his hand almost mechanically.</p><p>“Good afternoon, ma’am,” he recites for the umpteenth time that morning, “if you know the whereabouts of this bison—”</p><p>“Young man, this is the third time you’ve knocked on my door today,” the old lady clips in. “I can assure you I don’t know a thing about the Avatar’s pet air buffalo. Now get going. And…ugh, take that filthy creature with you. I have allergies.” The door slams shut.</p><p>
  <em>“Hey!”</em>
</p><p>“Uh, I’m pretty sure she’s talking about Momo, Toph.”</p><p>“Oh.” Toph relaxes, but there’s still a sizable chunk of rock in front of the doorstep that she’s ripped up between her feet. “Sorry. I’m pretty filthy right now, too, it’s hard to tell.”</p><p>Sokka wipes off the coating of Toph’s dirt that sticks to his palm after hurrying them all away from the wreckage. Soon they’re back in a sea of ridiculously large apartments, with the same plum blossom trees flanking every division in short-lived bursts of pink, the only splash of different color among the greens and browns the whole of Ba Sing Se seems to be drenched in. The only building Sokka now knows for sure they’ve visited is the one with the broken doorstep. Maybe that old lady should thank Toph.</p><p>“Man,” he huffs as they start walking down the neighborhood, stretching out the stiffness of his shoulders a little—it doesn’t help much, considering how Momo insists on staying put on Sokka like he’s his personal perch. “All these rich people houses look <em>exactly</em> the same. How do they not get their mail mixed up every day? I mean, the houses aren’t even placed in a pattern where you can walk your way in and out, it’s like they’re just—” he clenches his fists and gestures vaguely. “—Built to take up space.”</p><p>Toph blows at her bangs and they flop back down over her nose. “Yeah, rich people do love taking up space.”</p><p>“And for what?” Sokka crosses his arms. “They could do so much better. It’s not like they don’t have the resources. I think each house should have a number.”</p><p>“Huh?”</p><p>“Or, or—” he starts, spreading his arms out, giddy like he always is when cracking a puzzle, “maybe a set of numbers. And each cluster of houses could, like, start with the same digit or something. You could just address your mail to the house number instead of making the poor mailman track down the person by name.” He snorts. “Seriously, there’s probably at least thirty Lees up in this quadrant alone.”</p><p>“I’m so glad you have your priorities straight,” Toph says. “And way to forget the fact that I can’t read the numbers.”</p><p>“Well, maybe you could. We could have a separate label on each house, but this time instead of numbers, it’s…I dunno, a bunch of dots? Point is, they’ll be raised from the surface a little bit. That way, you could just slide your fingers across the label and read by touching.”</p><p>Toph opens her mouth almost immediately as if to say something, then just sucks in some air and tilts her head, looking confused.</p><p>“That’s…pretty smart, actually.”</p><p>“Really?” Sokka says, then catches himself just in time when he’s about to say <em>‘cause I completely bullshitted that,</em> and frowns. “Hey—what’s that supposed to mean?”</p><p>“It means you’re pretty stupid most of the time.”</p><p>Sokka glares at her, then realizes there’s no point to it. “Alright, do <em>you</em> have any ways to improve Ba Sing Se’s horrible infrastructure?”</p><p>“No, but I do know we’re wasting our time looking for Appa in the wrong place. No way he’s smuggled up in here with these hoity-toities. They can’t even handle a lemur.”</p><p>He hums. “I dunno, Momo is pretty hard to handle. Right there,” he says, grabbing Toph’s hand and placing it on the upper half of his arm. “He scratched me this morning when we fought for the last bean curd puff at breakfast.”</p><p>She traces the cuts. “Did you let him have i—”</p><p><em>“—Yes,</em> I let him have it,” he sighs, slumping. “And then he hacked up a hairball in my lap and tried to give it to me.” He jabs a finger in Momo’s face. “Listen, I know that’s your weird way of thinking we’re even but I really would have preferred something I could <em>put in my mouth!”</em></p><p>Momo curls his tail around him and looks down with those freakishly large eyes of his, ears drooping. Sokka turns away. He isn’t going to fall for that. Not—not that he <em>needs</em> to look away not to fall for it, and <em>definitely </em>not because he’s given into that cute face a few times before.</p><p>(And even if he did, it absolutely, certainly, sure-as-La’s-left-barbel wasn’t as recent as this morning.)</p><p>“Eww,” Toph says, but the look on her face is more appreciative than anything. “He really is a filthy creature.” She grabs Sokka by the arm and he lets out a yelp. “And he has more street smarts than you. You can’t just give in when you’re really after something. That’s not gonna get you by in the Lower Ring.”</p><p>He digs a heel against the cobblestoned path and manages to stop them both for a second. “The Lower Ring?!”</p><p>She grunts. “Don’t act so surprised. There’s gotta be a reason we’re not allowed down there. Plus, what was the last thing you’ve done that was even remotely fun?”</p><p>“Uh, I stumbled into a girls-only poetry club and had a haiku showdown with their leader. Annnd then I got kicked out a few minutes later. Ow<em>—what?”</em> he adds as Toph’s grip on him tightens, her fingers squeezing uncomfortably into his flesh. “So I used one syllable too many. It happens to the best of us.”</p><p><em>“Poetry?”</em> she spits out, her eyebrows flying upwards. “The most fun you’ve had is <em>poetry?</em> That’s just sad. We’re going down right now.”</p><p>So Sokka stops at a junction and tries to wave his hand for a free caravan, but Toph immediately slaps it out of the air— “Really, genius? You’re gonna ask an Upper Ring horseman to take us to whole other end of the kingdom like that’s not even a <em>little</em> bit suspicious?”—so he settles for clinging onto the kid’s shoulders for dear life while she skates across the city on a flat piece of earth, then violently stops when she senses, or Sokka hisses out warning of, the Dai Li; there’s one time, when they’re almost out of the Middle Ring, that the guards are so close that Sokka thinks they’re all dead for sure, and Toph sticks her tongue out in concentration and makes the earth jut out and shoot them across the air at the last second, falling into the outskirts of the city like limp ragdolls.</p><p>Well—Sokka falls like a limp ragdoll. Momo glides over and gracefully leaps to the ground right in front of his face. He lets out an incoherent grumble.</p><p>“Okay,” he says as he gets to his feet, Momo nestled back on his shoulder quicker than he can blink. “We might have been able to get in here, but the Dai Li’s eyes are probably everywhere. <em>Especially</em> in places we’re not allowed,” he emphasizes, and Toph scoffs. “So we need to keep a low profile and stick together—<em>MOMO, NO!”</em></p><p>Sokka tries to yank at his tail as he flies away, but it doesn’t do him any good; Momo’s got the flyer of Appa clutched between his feet, so he ends up running after him, yelling every single curse he knows between each breath. Some of them are just out of frustration and the heat of the moment, and others are because the Lower Circle’s far more crowded than that sea of giant Upper apartments will ever be, and by the time he stops his knees and elbows and gut are aching from the stone walls and several grumpy merchants he slams into the edges of along the way. He swears he hears someone behind him giggling the whole time. He’s going to pretend it isn’t Toph.</p><p>“Low profile, huh?” she says as Sokka finally skids to a halt, watching breathless as Momo scurries into a what looks like a shack at a dead end of the street.</p><p>The sign on the front’s either written in Earth Kingdom calligraphy or just super sloppy, but there’s one phrase he can make out dead in the center that makes his whole body stiffen up for a moment, then crash back down with a long sigh.</p><p>“Ugh. <em>Fortune telling.”</em></p><p>“Wow,” Toph breathes, pivoting her ankle to sense the ground. “This place is either horribly built or old as balls. It feels like it’s about to crash down at any moment!” She pulls at Sokka’s arm. “Let’s go inside.”</p><p>“Ohhh, no,” he clips in, wriggling free. “I am not doing this again. Fortune tellers are very sketchy types.”</p><p>He stands there, resolute, as Toph pouts. He turns his head away—not that he has to. And then Momo comes bounding out, settling on top of Sokka’s head with a chirp, and he nearly falls over when Momo drops something hot right into his hands.</p><p>“Ugh,” he sighs, inspecting the bean curd puff. “But their snacks are so good.”</p><p>“Oy, boy! You can’t just help yourself to my refreshments without paying for a reading!”</p><p>Sokka looks up, finds himself staring at a grumpy-looking old lady in a rumpled green dress, leaning against the rickety doorframe of the shack and waving violently at the air. The puff stops a few inches away from his mouth.</p><p>“He’s helping himself,” he says, pointing to Momo as crumbs slide off the top of his head.</p><p>She scowls, squinting, then takes a few more steps forward, registers the scene, and clasps her hands together, long nails clicking against each other. She smiles. “Oh, I already gave him his reading. Fascinating little creature.” She leans in to whisper. “Did you know your friend here once took down hundreds of Fire Nation soldiers in one fell swoop?”</p><p>Sokka swivels around on his heel. “Okay, you’re crazy. I’m outta here—<em>ack!”</em></p><p>Toph yanks at his wrist and he falls back against her shoulder helplessly—not because a twelve-year-old is stronger than he is, but because everyone in the Earth Kingdom is so damn <em>stubborn.</em> She bumps him off and points at the woman with her chin, jaw tensed.</p><p>“Hold it. She mentioned Fire Nation soldiers. She knows about the war.”</p><p>And he hates that that’s actually a <em>really </em>good point but tries to protest anyways. As soon as he puts a finger up and opens his mouth, he nearly chokes on what’s shoved into it. Dry flakes of puff fly out as Toph smacks him in the back.</p><p>“There, you ate it so you have to go get a reading now. Come on.”</p><p>“These,” he hisses, glaring at the lady as Toph drags him inside by the elbow, “are <em>really</em> damn good.”</p><p>There’s something uncanny about the way the inside of the shack looks way bigger than the outside makes it out to be. It doesn’t make the floor any less creaky and grimy, though—or the back, where the table and cushioned seats are any less jam-packed with random clutter. Musty old stacks of cards, scrolls, crystals, incense, half-empty bottles of ink like she opened a new one each time instead of using up the whole thing first, and a large, checkered block of wood propped along the side of the giant rack of shelves. A small bag droops over in front of it, a token or two spilling out. Sokka squints.</p><p>“Pai-sho?”</p><p>“Oh, no, that’s not of any use in fortune telling,” she says with a wave when she catches his eye. “I compete in tournaments in my spare time.” She winks, then grabs something off the tiny stove across the table. “White Lotus Gambit gets them every time. Bai ji guan?”</p><p>Toph readily takes the cup offered to her. “Sure, I love sharing tea with strangers.”</p><p>Sokka plops down on his seat, and the cushion sends dust flying into his face. “Hmph.”</p><p>“Fine, boy, if you refuse tea leaf divination, then give me your palm.”</p><p>He makes it a point to keep his hands wrapped around his elbows. “I don’t need my fortune told, lady. Apparently my <em>life of struggle and anguish</em> is written all over my face.”</p><p>“Well, now, that’s just ridiculous,” she says, and reaches across the table and grabs hold of his head.</p><p>He feels her old wrinkly hands and too-sharp nails scrape over him as he thrashes, being turned around the neck to either side.</p><p>“Ow! What are you doing?”</p><p>He watches her frown like she’s inspecting her own handiwork. “Eyes…” she mutters, “Cocked-up a little, means you’re quick-witted and active, a clear philtrum—hmm, very auspicious—ah, a slight hump in the nose—a bit impulsive maybe,” she says, pushing him back in his seat, “but certainly nothing discerning anguish.”</p><p>“Okay, <em>ow, </em>I get it! Let go of me!”</p><p>“Oh, and your ears! Just splendid. They’re <em>huge!”</em></p><p>Toph points at him. “Ha ha!” He can feel his eye twitch.</p><p>“But your future…” the woman narrows her eyes, pressing her palms against the table. Sokka watches it rattle uncertainly, the tea sloshing in their cups. “It looks uncertain.”</p><p>He rolls his eyes. “Thanks, I definitely wouldn’t have figured that out by myself. You’re amazing.”</p><p>She snorts at him, rattles the table some more, and Sokka picks his and Toph’s cups up to save them. “The art of fortune telling is a two-way street.” Her hand unfurls in the air dramatically. “If you’re not open to your own destiny, then <em>of course</em> I will have trouble telling you what it is.” Now the hand points at him, razor-sharp nail right at the tip of his nose, and he swallows. “You lack trust. You lack so, <em>so</em> much trust. Right now, your greatest obstacle is your skepticism. Let go of it if you truly want to protect yourself and the ones you love.”</p><p>He’s glad he’d returned Toph’s cup back to her before the woman had said that. His own goes sailing to the floor.</p><p><em>“Protect?”</em> he spits out, hands clutching at his arms as he shoots up. “What are you talking about? I can protect people just fine.”</p><p>She raises an eyebrow at him. “I’m sure you can, but if you truly wish to <em>express</em> that determination—”</p><p>“I am determined! I am, I <em>was,</em> I—” His head seems to throb as he scrunches his eyebrows, so he sucks in a deep breath. “I <em>always</em> do everything I can,” he snaps, and then before he can stop himself:</p><p>“You weren’t<em> there</em> at the North Pole!”</p><p>His eyes are on the floor as he hears Toph get out of her seat.</p><p>“Huh?”</p><p>“I…” he bites the inside of his lip. He never knew silence could feel so loud. When he shakes his head, finally, it feels like he’s cutting through static in the air—like the kind he’d always rub his hands against their rugs for to shock Katara with his finger, and say that firebenders were stupid for even thinking of trying to mess with them because their tribe had the world’s greatest lightningbender. That jolt, but a hundred times stronger.</p><p>“Nothing,” he says, and Toph huffs, dissatisfied, as he says it again. “Nothing.”</p><p>She slams her cup on the table, and Sokka winces at how much tea gets sloshed over.</p><p>“No,” she says, “what it sounds like is something happened that you couldn’t control, and now you’re blaming yourself for it like some self-righteous idiot.”</p><p>“But you weren—”</p><p>She crosses a leg as she falls back in her seat, unfazed by the new coating of dust settling around her. “Yeah, yeah, I wasn’t there, either. But how do you think I felt while you guys were in the library and Appa got dragged off?”</p><p>“That doesn’t count,” he says, looking away. It comes out harsher than he means it to.</p><p>“Wha—oh, so <em>your</em> feelings matter more than mine?”</p><p>He jerks as she jabs a thumb flat to her chest. “No! It’s just that—we all <em>know</em> that wasn’t your fault. There’s no reason for you to be upset over that.”</p><p>“That’s what I’m saying about you if you would just <em>listen,”</em> she shoots back. “You don’t have to tell me what happened, but wallowing around in your own feelings isn’t worth it. You know what I think? You’ve got some weird adult complex going on with you just ‘cause you’re the oldest out of all of us. Makes sense since you’re siblings with Sugar Queen—"</p><p>The woman cuts in, and Sokka silently thanks her—even though he probably deserved whatever she had coming. Who needs fortune tellers? Toph Beifong could read him for filth any day.</p><p>“Sometimes,” the woman says, her voice soft, getting a new cup out and refilling Sokka’s tea, “even when you did everything you could, destiny has other plans.”</p><p>“Yeah,” he says bitterly, sitting back down. The tea is either too sweet in general or too sweet for what he cares for right now. “That’s the problem. That’s not fair. If you should try, it should mean something.” He drinks it anyways, downing half of it in one gulp before setting the cup back down. “But trying’s never enough.”</p><p>The woman eyes him curiously, and when he looks up at her with something long and wiggling poking out of her head, he nearly shoots back up again. He’d forgotten Momo was here. He’s usually not this quiet.</p><p>He plops onto her shoulder and she scratches him behind the ears. “Ah,” she says, clicking her tongue. “It seems you think destiny is a path cut out in stone. That’s where you are wrong. It is alive and breathing!” She grabs hold of her cup, eyes crinkling from a growing, excited smile, and places it between her and Sokka. She drums the wood right next to the cup, and the ripples fly out from the center in a pool of gold.</p><p>“It is like a stream,” she breathes. “Place a man in water, and he can either fight against the current to change his direction or let it take him where it desires. Sometimes—” she tilts the cup violently, half the tea soaking into the wood, “—the stream takes him somewhere unexpected. But that doesn’t mean he cannot try swimming again—he would be a fool not to, to simply let himself drown!”</p><p>Sokka’s nostrils flare. He gets it, he does, but he wishes they didn’t have to waste nearly a whole pot of oolong on this.</p><p>“Accept change as part of your life,” she finishes, and there’s a strange sincerity in her eyes as she tilts her head at him. “Watch it come and go and come again as natural as breathing. It’s in your blood. Water is the element of <em>change,”</em> she stresses, then stops, staring at him when he yelps and glances to the side. “You…<em>are</em> from the Southern Water Tribe, are you not?”</p><p>He fumbles with his cup before shoving his hands away from the table entirely. “What? Pssh, no, I’m just an ordinary Ba Sing Se…<em>ian</em> in an ordinary ring where I live! Ordinarily,” he adds, and Toph slaps herself on the forehead. “I am totally supposed to be here.”</p><p>“You’re dressed in all blue, boy.”</p><p>“Well that’s kind of racist, don’t you think?” he mutters. “Ow!” He rubs his arm where Toph punched it.</p><p>“Mm…yes,” the woman says, grabbing at Sokka’s arm when he isn’t noticing. “I see your skepticism has lifted, even if it is infinitesimally.” She turns the palm up when he turns around, stares for a moment, then lets out a light gasp. “Oh, yes. Your life <em>will</em> be full of struggle and anguish.”</p><p>“Oh, come on!”</p><p>“However—I can see that your adaptability will be your strength,” she says, and places her hand over his. There’s a warmth to it that feels unusual—or maybe he’s just so used to the cold that any flash of heat feels like a world of its own for a fleeting moment.</p><p>“Just like water,” she says, and gives a small smile. “Have more faith in yourself, and out of your hardships will be forged a natural leader.”</p><p>Sokka smirks and whispers, “Did you hear that? I’m the leader of this group.”</p><p>“Shut up,” Toph hisses back, “she’s not done yet.”</p><p>“—But you will eventually find yourself in places beyond your wits being enough to save you. And it will be up to you to take a leap of faith. Destiny can guide you,” she says, placing Sokka’s hand back down, “but only if you let it.”</p><p>Silence. So much silence. Sokka finally decides to break it with a “Who are you, anyway?”</p><p>The woman scoffs, picking Momo up from off her shoulder and placing him back on <em>Sokka’s,</em> of all places, before closing her eyes and gesturing dramatically.</p><p>“Names are arbitrary. I am beyond such worldly, materialistic needs.” She cracks open one eye and grins. “That will be ten copper pieces, please.”</p><hr/><p>“Well, that was a waste of time,” Sokka says, hands folded behind the back of his head as they make their way back into the heart of the Lower Ring. “We didn’t even ask about Appa.”</p><p>“She does have the flyer now,” Toph points out. “That counts for something. It’s way more useful in her hands than those Upper Ring stuffed shirts.”</p><p>Sokka gives a half shrug with his free shoulder. “Maybe. A leap of faith…” he mutters, still trying to make sense of the words in his head. “You know what that means, Momo?”</p><p>He immediately swipes the puff Sokka’s holding out of his hands and thwacks his tail against Sokka’s nose before flying off. Naturally, Sokka darts after him.</p><p>“—Okay, seriously?!” he yells in between panting in pursuit. “You <em>already</em> cleared out the whole tray back there! Can’t you let me have anything? What is<em> wrong</em> with y—”</p><p>He skids to a halt in the alleyway Momo’s stopped in, hears Toph thud to a stop too. He stretches an arm out when she tries to come forward.</p><p>“There’s something here,” he says, keeping the rest of his body still as he can. The growling at the far end grows with the shadows moving forward. “Something dangerous. Don’t move.”</p><p>“Relax,” she says, pushing his arm out of the way. “It just sounds like a bunch of cats.”</p><p>“Pygmy pumas,” he mutters, as the creatures make their way out of the darkness. There’s something about the way the yellows of their eyes glint with even the smallest amount of light in a backlit alley at sunset, even brighter than the glint of his boomerang outside of the shadows, that makes him just <em>know.</em></p><p>These things were<em> born</em> to be hunters.</p><p>Momo chitters as he jumps out of the shadows, too, and Sokka unfreezes and twirls the boomerang around in his hand.</p><p>“Watch it! Those things could hurt you!”</p><p>The sudden sound makes the pumas growl, slinking closer—and then Sokka watches in horror as Momo <em>jumps</em> on top of one of them, chirping a little as he waves his wings around. And then the one in the middle, slightly larger than the other two pygmy pumas, leaps forward, sniffs at Sokka’s foot while he tries his best not to scream, and curls itself up right on top of his toes. Its eyelids droop shut as it purrs.</p><p>“Great,” he says weakly. “Just got an apex predator chilling on my foot. No big deal.”</p><p>Toph laughs. “Wow. Animals just can’t get enough of you. You’re like those princesses in folktales who sing to little meadow voles to help them with their laundry.”</p><p>“I am <em>not!”</em>  Sokka squawks. “Er—” he adds, watching the lump of fur on top of him snarl in warning, “—nice kitty.”</p><p>Momo joins in too, shoving the puma aside enough for it to start growling again, but it quickly subsides as he wraps his tail around it and makes a little gurgly noise inside of his mouth.</p><p>Everything about it seems so wrong. Yet so right. The sun’s almost all gone now, and both Momo and the puma’s shadows seem to stretch larger at the same speed across the dirt floor.</p><p>“A leap of faith,” Sokka murmurs a moment later, at the half-disked moon glowing up in the sky.</p><hr/><p>Sokka <em>hates</em> rice paper, he decides. Or the certain kind he’s trying to use right now, anyways.</p><p>Everything he writes keeps bleeding through the other edge. At first he thought maybe he was just pressing too hard, but even the lightest, airiest stroke sees its way through the sheet and then some. Fitting, he supposes, considering it’s the only paper he could manage to find in the Western Air Temple.</p><p>“Are you done with the note yet?”</p><p>“Patience, Zuko!” It starts out as a yell until he realizes everyone else is still asleep, so it ends up more of a strangled whisper. His voice cracks near the end and his cheeks heat up as he turns back to his paper. “Letter writing is an art.”</p><p>“That’s the third time you’ve said that,” Zuko groans, and when Sokka looks back up he’s standing right next to him, a hand sliding over his face.</p><p>“Well, maybe if you hadn’t interrupted me three times, I would’ve finished sooner,” he says. He gives a last flourish, smooths the sheet out, and clears his throat. “Okay, how’s this? Dear Aang, Katara, and Toph—even though Toph can’t read, I mean, I’m assuming this is being read out loud, so this is for you, too, I didn’t wanna be rude—you may be wondering why I’m not here, and why Zuko happens to not be here, either. If you guys think it was a coincidence, you are sorely mistaken. I’m fine, though! And Appa should be with you guys, too. You may be wondering why he’s here and we’re not. Well, obviously, we didn’t take him. It would suck if we lost him again. There was actually a war balloon on the other side of this place—remember, the kind that we used back at the Southern Air Temple? Teo would probably remember if you don’t. Actually, if you wanna ask Zuko about it when we get back—”</p><p>“—Okay, <em>enough!”</em> Zuko hisses.</p><p>“What? But I’m not even done with the first paragraph.”</p><p>“Exactly,” he says, yanking away a spare sheet of paper Sokka had intended for all the P.S. parts. “We need to keep it short and simple. And we need a solid enough excuse so the others won’t come running after us.” He makes a few scratches, and they swirl around too fancy for their own good. Sokka’s really annoyed that they don’t bleed through.</p><p>“Here.”</p><p>Sokka takes the note. “Need meat. Gone fishing. Back in a few days. Sokka and Zuko.”</p><p>“See, it works ‘cause you think about food a lot.”</p><p>“Oh, ha, <em>ha,”</em> he snarks. He’s confused when Zuko just stares back at him blankly.</p><p>“That wasn’t a joke?” he tries to say, but it ends up sounding more like a question. “Isn’t it good that you try to provide for everyone?”</p><p>And Sokka finds himself <em>flushing</em> at that, for some reason, as he fidgets with the edges of the note, because <em>Zuko,</em> of all people, gets it. He feels transparent as a sheet of Air Nomad rice paper. A moment later he finds himself grinning, and it’s so sudden and wide that Zuko tenses up for a moment.</p><p>Good. He’d already guessed where Sokka was going, that he’d sneak out alone at night, and now this. Sokka still had to have <em>some</em> sort of element of surprise over him to feel at ease.</p><p>“Yeah, I guess it is. Fine, we’ll use this note.”</p><p>“Uh—wait,” Zuko says abruptly, grabbing it back for a minute to scribble down something near the end. Then he hands it back.</p><p>“Aang, practice your firebending while I’m gone. Do twenty sets of fire fists and ten hot squats every time you hear a badgerfrog croak. Zuko. Ha!” Sokka snorts. “Sifu Hotman gave him homework.”</p><p>It’s hard to tell in the dim light, but Sokka thinks he sees Zuko go a little pink when he clenches his fists. “Do <em>not</em>—ugh, whatever,” he sighs. “Let’s get going.”</p><p>Sokka’s not sure where to put the note. And then he nearly trips over Momo, snoring and sprawled over the stone floor, ears twitching, and slides it under his arm. He tries not to wake him up, but he doesn’t really need to be careful about that. Momo’s always slept like a log.</p><p>“Goodbye, buddy,” he finds himself whispering before joining Zuko’s shrinking figure in the shadows. “I’m about to go take a leap of faith.”</p><p>Turns out Sokka doesn’t need any element of surprise with Zuko after all. Both the trip in the war balloon and the boy himself are so awkward it hurts.</p><p>Katara was always the one to give the long speeches when morale was low, or things got tough. Aang—well, he didn’t give them nearly as often than he should, considering <em>he’s</em> the Avatar and all, but when he did, they were instilled with a sort of purpose that made them hard to ignore. And Toph—damn, she was so good with words it was kind of scary. And it was just made even scarier by the fact that she wasn’t even trying. And then there’s Zuko.</p><p>Zuko tries so hard that it spirals right back into sounding like he isn’t trying. You could only notice when you were really up close, watching him carefully turn over each thought and try to say something meaningful in response. Sokka does that when he’s trying to make himself look important. And there’s something to be said for that unwavering sense of determination they both had, too, no matter how stupid it could end up making them look.</p><p>Maybe the reason Sokka had hated Zuko so much because he reminded him too much of himself.</p><p>(Well, <em>part</em> of the reason, obviously. There was that whole evil conquest thing. The whole sending a psychic explosion assassin after them thing. But they were slowly fumbling past it.)</p><p>And when the moment actually comes, it’s almost instinctive the way Sokka confides in him, that his first girlfriend turned into the moon. It’s strange how much easier it is to process things once you’ve said them out loud. Even stranger how surprisingly reassuring it is when Zuko blinks at him for a moment, unsure what to say, before settling on, “That’s rough, buddy.”</p><p>Yeah, it sure was rough.</p><p>“So…” he says, trying to fill in the silence again, “How’s the whole…” He wiggles his fingers. “…being good thing feel?”</p><p>“Um…good? I guess?”</p><p>“Good, <em>good,”</em> Sokka says, hanging onto the word as he twiddles his thumbs. At least they could be horrible at talking together. “Yeah. Makes sense.”</p><p>“Well—” Zuko says after a lapse, like he’s thought about it but still isn’t sure exactly what he’s trying to say, “—according to my uncle, I was destined to struggle between knowing what’s good and evil. My paternal great-grandfather was Firelord Sozin.” He leans over the front of the balloon’s basket, hand rested against his cheek. “But my maternal one was Roku.”</p><p>Sokka nearly chokes on the air, then on his own spit. Zuko’s working eye widens in fear, but Sokka waves a hand at him, coughing into the other one until he can compose himself.</p><p><em>“Roku?!”</em> he manages to spit out finally, eyes still watering. “Like—the <em>Avatar </em>Roku?!”</p><p>“Um,” Zuko mumbles. “Yeah. I think that’s the only Roku any of us know about. The name’s pretty dated.”</p><p>“Holy shit,” Sokka wheezes, then shakes his head as his laughter grows louder. <em>“Hoooly shit.”</em></p><p>Zuko frowns. “What?”</p><p>“That means—” He tries to catch his breath even though he knows it’s useless. “That means <em>Aang—</em>Aang is your <em>grandpa!”</em></p><p>Zuko keeps frowning in confusion, then looks absolutely mortified as the realization dawns on him.</p><p>“Oh,” he says weakly. “I never thought of it that way.”</p><p>“Oh, this is a <em>goldmine.”</em> Sokka whips around, looks out to the sky scowling as dramatically as he can. <em>“I must capture my great-gramps to restore my honor.”</em></p><p>Zuko’s not a good sport about it. He looks like he’s about to stalk away to the other corner, but given how stupid that would look in a tiny metal basket, he settles for shoving Sokka instead. There’s some anger to it, but it seems halfhearted.</p><p>Sokka snorts. “Oh, come on. If you’re with us now, you <em>are</em> gonna get made fun of. All of us get made fun of. Don’t take it personally.”</p><p>Zuko seems to take that as an invitation to take it <em>very</em> personally. He crosses his arms over the edge of the basket. “I don’t know why I told you that.”</p><p>He sighs. Okay, fine. Maybe that joke <em>was</em> a little too personal. Well, for <em>now,</em> at least. He’s definitely going to use it another day. He joins him at the edge, an elbow propped on the basket’s rim.</p><p>“Hey, sorry. I get it, all this magic stuff is weird. Must’ve been hard to get used to.” He chews the inside of his cheek. “I mean—if it makes you feel any better, I don’t know why I told you that my girlfriend turned into the moon.” He sags a little. “Not even Toph knows that. Aang and Katara only know ‘cause they were there when it happened.”</p><p>Zuko turns around slowly, then blinks even more slowly before he speaks.</p><p>“How exactly…did she turn into the moon?”</p><p>Sokka puffs out a little breath, tilting his head back at Zuko. “Oh, you know, the usual. Zhao killed the Moon Spirit, who happened to be in the form of a fish for some reason, and Princess Yue, who was saved from dying at birth by the sacred moon-ocean-fish…pond…<em>water,</em> still had the moon spirit inside of her so she gave her life down here to go up there.” He gestures to the sky. “Basic spirity stuff, really.”</p><p>“Um,” Zuko replies, and Sokka agrees wholeheartedly.</p><p>“Oh, and she kissed me goodbye,” he feels the sudden need to tack on at the end.</p><p>Zuko gapes. “You’ve kissed a spirit before? Uncle would be…<em>fascinated,” </em>he decides, even though Sokka’s pretty sure that wasn’t the first word he was going to use. “He’s been to the Spirit World before.”</p><p>“So did I,” Sokka declares, and he’s not really sure why he feels so defensive about it. “Well, not <em>willingly.</em> I was kinda dragged into this rainbow bamboo forest by a weird-looking mutant panda thing? Hei Bai or something.” He shrugs. “I guess the spirits just love messing with me.”</p><p>“Mm,” Zuko says, and it seems like the conversation’s died out again, until he pipes up, “Do you believe in reincarnation?”</p><p>“Uh—” Sokka falters, caught off guard, even though he remembers Aang telling him the guy is much more philosophical than he looks. And Sokka doesn’t really care about philosophy, or thinking about his place in the Universe, so he just grins.</p><p>“Well, grandpa Aang is living proof of it, isn’t he?”</p><p>“But the Avatar’s a given. What about people like us?”</p><p>Sokka shifts uncomfortably. “I mean, I guess there’s no way to prove it. But what makes us so special that we’d have the Avatar’s magic powers?”</p><p>Zuko stares at him like he’s an idiot. “What? Reincarnation isn’t magic. It’s spiritual.”</p><p>“Anything that isn’t science is magic to me,” he says, lazily waving a hand in the air, and Zuko doesn’t seem too pleased with that, but he doesn’t argue. “But if I could come back, I’d probably be an animal. No worries, no responsibilities, just lounging around eating fruit in the trees without getting swept up in the middle of a war.”</p><p>He’s not sure how much of it he really means at this point, but he knows that’s what he would have settled for maybe a year ago, so he sticks to it. There’s something that feels so half-finished about him right now, like if someone dropped him he’d shatter instead of putting up a fight, like he’s <em>weak,</em> like he’s <em>fragile,</em> and he <em>hates</em> it.</p><p>He thinks it’ll take a whole other year to go by for him to know what he should have really said—if his own destiny doesn’t toss him over like a toddler with an heirloom vase in an antique store, that is.</p><p>“Like a lemur,” Zuko offers helpfully, and it’s just painfully awkward and just well-meaning enough that Sokka gives a small smile as he looks up at the sky.</p><p>“Yeah, I do like lemurs.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Wow so I am a fool who loves getting carried away so this chapter is like, twice the length of the previous one. I'm so sorry. The final chapter should be around the same length as this one I think? I'm not sure yet. But I don't think it'll be significantly longer.</p><p>The really early drafts of this fic were just supposed to focus on Sokka's relationship with Momo but of course the rest of the Gaang ended up getting dragged along too. The power of friendship &lt;3 Also I was always kind of upset that Sokka never got a proper reading from Madame Wu in the fortunetelling episode, so I tried to give him just a little something. It's what he deserves.</p><p>Episodes referenced: 1x08 (Avatar Roku), 2x04 (The Swamp), 3x14 (The Boiling Rock, Part 1). Rest of the stuff from here on out will be post-series.</p><p>Anyways thank you for reading! As always thoughts are appreciated!</p>
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